He lets her stuff stay in his room. It doesn't fill the void her enlightening presence left in its wake, but it's better than nothing, he supposes. He'll box it up at the end of the semester when he musters the strength to hide it away in a taped cardboard box somewhere. He wonders what label to give it.

She left her Christmas gift here: one of those updated instant cameras she begged him for. It's a powder blue, not a single scratch on it. She takes such great care of the things she owns. The pictures of the two of them that she snapped sit beside it in a neat row. She kept the one she took of he and Blair sleeping. He hopes, for some reason, that she still has it. That she thinks of him from time to time as the weeks of silence pass between them.

He lets her awful country CD run in his car in moments of weakness. He can imagine her laughing at the thought of him willingly listening to Sam Hunt, but the lyrics he cringed at before suddenly apply to him and it makes him tired, anxious.

He heats some water and pours it over a bag of one of her old boxes of earl gray tea. He mixes some of the honey she gave him from her own bees into it, watches it drip from the spoon like melted amber into the dark swirl beneath.

The next time they meet is Saint Patrick's Day. They used to stay in on this day to avoid the drunken masses. This year, they both end up at Liz's biggest party yet.

Kid has corned beef hash in a slow cooker somewhere off to the right, but has long escaped to his domain. They have some spiked green sherbet in an enormous glass bowl, and green streamers hanging from the ceiling in a variety of patterns. They brought the jacuzzi in the backyard to life now that some of the winter winds have traveled north.

Maka doesn't recognize many of the students here this time, so she stays beside Patty and sips slowly at the weird concoction. She isn't sure what kind of alcohol is in it, but she doesn't find it in her to care.

Soul arrives late as always with Black Star and Tsubaki not too far behind him. Soul has a bowl of mashed potatoes in his arms, which she assumes her roommate made. She meets his sanguine gaze as she often does but this time, she holds it as long as she can, as if daring him to break contact first. He doesn't look away, even as he places the bowl down beside the crock pot and almost falls over when Black Star laughs at something and nudges him.

Her heart grows heavy, watered down. She looks away as Liz whistles to get the attention of some of the students from the coffee table. She's glad Kid isn't here to see the blatant disregard she has for his new polish.

"Everyone who is interested in my version of spin the bottle please head over this way!" she shouts. A few trickle in her direction, but a majority of the people here are already too distracted to join the game.

Maka shrugs and follows Liz to a small circle of students on the carpet by the glass porch doors. She cannot hide the widening of her eyes as Soul helps himself to a vacant spot not too far from her. She focuses on the foam pattern in her red solo cup.

Her friend spins the used Heineken bottle and it points to her. She sighs, and takes a quick glance around the circle. She doesn't feel particularly attracted to any of them beside Soul, much to her dismay. It's her own fault for entering, she supposes.

She has a notion that Liz has planned for all of this when she spins it once more and it points right to him: all round red eyes and sideswept alabaster hair.

It's only three minutes, she thinks. You can handle him for three more minutes of your life.

Liz has a wicked grin. "Now, let me just remind the two of you that this is my version of spin the bottle."

"Which means what?" Maka asks, placing down her drink.

"Five minutes in the jacuzzi," she says, "in the nude."

"Due to extenuating circumstances I don't think-"

"I'll do it," Soul cuts in, his gaze intent on Maka. "If she does it, I'll do it."

He knows she cannot back down from a dare. She's too brave. Brave about the things that keep her pride in check, especially. She wants to cry and shout and punch the wall at once. She gets up, a new fire in her eyes.

"Fine. I'll do it too," she says, teeth gritted.

She stays, for the first minute, on the opposite side from him. She has to admit that the pressure feels good against her bare skin, even more so when the few breezes that slide above them are coated in a early-spring chill. She sneaks one glance at his scar, then looks over his shoulder and at the weathered fence beyond.

"Maka," he says after a long while, "we need to talk at some point."

"I was waiting for you to start," she says, her mouth near the bubbling water. She can feel her skin pruning already. "I know how fragile you are."

"You're really starting a fight?"

"You started the original one, didn't you?" she retorts, her eyes sharp.

He sinks further into the water. "Yeah. I did."

She waits.

"I miss you," he continues.

She sighs. "I'm sorry, Soul."

"I should be saying that."

"It was both of us, I think."

There is a long silence that follows, just the rumbling of the hot water around them. She dares to meet his gaze at last. His eyes are weighed down with tender, aching skin. She doesn't reach out to him. Not yet. But she slides just an inch closer.

"Yeah," he says as she makes her way over, "it was."

"But you have to admit," she says, "sometimes you look for excuses to be miserable."

"You do, too." One of his arms is outstretched toward her, like always. Always ready to catch her when she stumbles, even though she remains the strongest between the two of them.

"That's why I can say that," she whispers.

She knows there isn't much time left. Liz will rip open the sliding door and this moment will crumble like old paper, right into dust in their hands.

"Friends?" he asks as she sidles up next to him.

"I don't think I can do that," she replies.

His breath is labored. "Why not?"

"I preferred the way we were before." Her lips are so close to his.

The door slides open. "Time's up!" Liz yells.

They both turn to look at her, faces heated.

"Wow," she says, "if five minutes and no clothes was all the two of you needed to make up I would've told you to get naked a long time ago."

"Just throw us the clothes, Liz, please." She reaches for his hand in the water, and revels in the feel of it.

"There's something I've been hoping to show you," he says as they get dressed in the morning a few weeks later. He's glad he long shed the winter coats and smothering scarves. He loves the low-hanging humidity in the air as they stroll toward the fields of the science building. "I decided to take a wildlife conservation class, and my final project is going really well."

She leaves her hair down, and he smiles at the way it curls in the warmth. She follows him without a single word.

They reach the other side of the clearing, where two more hives sit on cinderblocks. They are smaller than the ones she's been raising, but humming with a brilliant life. She sits with him in the grass just a few feet away.

"I've been trying to think of ways to get people more interested in raising bees," he says. "So I thought, what do people like about bees? The honey."

She nods with a befuddled smile.

"And I've been trying to get over my fear of performing. So, I combined them for my project. I've kept your jar of honey. I've been playing for my bees but not for yours, since I figured your bees wouldn't have very good musical taste." He squeezes her shoulder and she shoves his hand off with a glare.

"Anyway," he continues with a grin, "take a sample of your own honey, and then mine."

She takes a spoon and dips it into her own jar, then his. She smiles when she tastes the jar he harvested. "It's so much sweeter."

"I got a lot of my fellow music majors to help. We've been selling the honey. Start that club again next year, and you'll have a full room of potential beekeepers, guaranteed."

"Soul," she says, and he grimaces at the tears that form in her evergreen eyes, "this is amazing. Thank you." She leans forward and hugs him.

"No, thank you," he mumbles into her hair. "Now I can play again."

She backs away, places a hand on one side of his face. "Good. The world needs to hear what you're capable of."

"That's what my father says."

They leave the window to his room open on the late-spring nights. Her eyes are closed, but he can tell she isn't asleep yet from the way her chest rises and falls, too rapid, too short of breath. He stares while he has the chance to, observes her honeyed eyelashes and the bridge of her nose, dusted in sun-fading freckles. He admires the strength he sees in her shoulders, which he's leaned on more than once.

"Maka," he whispers, "I'm ready to talk to you."

Her eyes are open in an instant but she says nothing, just meets his leaden gaze in the dim starlight that falls in silver fragments in his room.

He grabs her hand under the sheet, and grips it. "My father is very sick," he says.

The word 'sorry' sits on her tongue but he stops her. "I don't want apologies," he continues, "I just need you with me."

"You don't even need to ask me to do that, Soul. I'm here."

He lays on her shoulder, breathes in the scent of something faint like cactus and something strong like late-night tea and wildflower.

The plane ride feels so long to him, but she smiles at him as they fly over sand-coated cities to reach her small town in Nevada and he smiles back, just like always.

"You nervous?" she asks as the plane starts its descent.

"No," he says. "I have no reason to be. You're here. Are you?"

"I'm my father's… best woman, so I guess I can't act like I am. I have to give a speech at the rehearsal dinner, though. That I'm a little nervous about." She wrote it on the ride here.

"Can I read it?"

She hands it over. Her writing is chicken-scratch, but he's well-adjusted at this point.

I love my father. Let me start by saying that, because I don't believe I've told him that enough. I love you, papa, even on your worst days, because you love me even on mine and for that I'll always be grateful…

They wave off her father and his new wife as they get in the limo to head back to the airport. They have the house all to themselves, which Maka was sure not to directly mention to her father for fear he'd turn the car around and observe them for the rest of summer break.

"You think it'll work out?" Soul asks as they head into her home.

"I think he'll do his best, like always. We'll see. He does really love her, I think. And she definitely loves him. I can see it." She smiles as they make their tired way up the aging stairs to her bedroom.

"You can see that sort of stuff?" He sticks his hand in his pockets.

"Sometimes." She shrugs.

They face each other in the hall. "So what do you see when you look at me?" His eyes stay on hers.

"A lot, actually. But what do you want me to see?" She smiles.

"Love," he says after a pensive moment, "because that's what I feel when I look at you."

"And you say you're not a words person." She leans on the wall behind her. "I love you, too."

"You think we'll work out?" he says as he moves forward in her direction.

"Without a doubt," she says. She lets her dress fall to the floor once again, and he smiles.

He loves how night sounds in her room here: nightingales, sand being dragged by strong winds in the distance, and the way she whispers goodnight.